No one ever said it was going to be easy...

Drew-isms

August 12, 2013

You know, the "you've only got them for this long until they leave the nest and you're miserable so get off your fucking phone and play with them DAMNIT" thing.

I can't be the only one who thinks that whenever anyone says something like that.

You only have 18 summers, you know or soon they'll be driving you around or I miss when they were small and making gigantic messes with LEGOs.

Seriously, someone actually said that to me and I wanted to make him walk through my playroom barefoot just to watch him beg me for mercy.

See, I know I will miss it and I will be sad. I'm already that parent who knows what is coming but is still distracted on my phone sometimes when my kids are showing me the soap they carved with a butter knife at which point they make me feel like shit.

So when I saw the whole 18 summers thing, with it's actual number that you can countdown and feel crappier every year you get closer to that magic number, I decided that we needed to have fun.

FUN!!!

And now, every single freaking action I take and decision I make all summer long must pass the fun test, which means we're having popsicles for breakfast and taking trips to Washington D.C. and eating goldfish before bed even after we brushed our teeth and then must brush them again BECAUSE MOTHEREFFING FUN.

Now it's not that I'm not usually fun, but I'm busy a lot and I work a lot and I'm alone a lot and add that all up and you get well, orderly and organized and sometimes a little rigid and well, maybe not super fun. Dinnertimes and bedtimes and schedules because that is how sanity must be maintained.

Side effects: Shortness and loud talking.

Which for kids is probably not fun, even though I'd argue fun is had, just not necessarily in an eat whatever you want for dinner so long as it's actual food kind of fun.

So as you might guess, my SUMMER OF FUN DAMNIT plan has completely backfired and now my kids think that I'm a pushover. Because as we parents know, fun comes with a price.

What I think is fun, like a DC Duck Tour in the blazing heat on a weird bus that goes into the water with "Captain Talks A Lot" as my son called him, quite accurately because that's his job and all, is not really fun to them.

The train ride is long and boring and all the walking is long and boring and the baseball game is hot and long and you guessed it BORING.

When are we getting on the bus? When are we getting off the bus? Are we at the Metro? Can't we just take a taxi? I'm hot, thirsty, tired, hungry I NEED ALL THE THINGS RIGHT NOW MOM can you get me some cotton candy and you got me PINK I WANTED BLUE.

And now they think they can have goldfish before bed every night.

But then, as my daughter dosed off after a day of long boring walking, she said "Mom, you're so fun." Which can only mean one thing. She's buttering me up for the Fruit Loops she saw in the hotel lobby breakfast bar.

Or maybe, amidst all the groaning, moaning, and whining, which I'm pretty sure is part of being a kid, they're having fun after all.

May 30, 2013

Those long, painful sleepless nights are mostly blurry these days, with my littlest now nearly three, tucked each night in her toddler bed.

What I do remember is the distinct feeling of claustrophobia, from all the holding and rocking and not-co-sleeping, sometimes with a baby literally attached to me. I just wanted to breathe and sleep without a teeny heel stuck in my side or a sweaty head firmly planted in the crook of my arm.

At first my brain had a hard time processing the longing in my heart to have them back snuggled up next to me, their hot breath on my face. The light snore of their stuffy little nose in my ear.

But now, it's like I never had babies. And a whole piece of my history, the story of motherhood that I clung to so deeply and identified with, the sleepless mom with sore arms and bruised side, is gone.

I heard rumors of this transition, urban myths (or so I thought) spread by been-there-done-that parents clinging like I am now to those memories and moments that I know now will pass. Then change, to become new memories and moments.

Where little children cuddle in your bed and actually sleep, their now slightly bigger heel still in your side. Still attached to you. But in a different, better way.

January 28, 2013

As a stage performer, musician, dancer, and a public speaker, you can probably guess how many times I've heard the "just visualize the audience in their underwear" tidbit. Because imagining people in their boxers and granny panties is supposed to be so hilarious that you'll somehow forget that you're on stage and need to remember a whole shit ton of lines and musical notes.

Yeah, never quite worked for me.

But now that I have two anxious children, and a therapist on retainer (or so it seems), I've been learning all sorts of strategies to deal with anxiety that I'd never heard before, probably because I've never actually seen a therapist for anxiety.

I'm aware that humor works as a coping mechanism because as I say to myself on an almost regular basis, as I wipe marker off the walls and listen to yet another round of berating comments from my 2-year old for providing her with necessities to keep her alive, if I wasn't able to laugh about it, I'd cry.

Truth be told, sometimes, er, a lot of times I do cry, but mostly, or especially when I talk to my dear friend who can make even my dad dying hilarious, well I laugh. And it's not so bad anymore. And yes, I realize sounds like a Julie Andrews song, but whatever it works.

It's helped my son deal with his fear of tornadoes and bad dreams, in which I turned a killer bee into a silly goofball bee who got his butt stuck in one of our kitchen chairs and buzzed his way right out the door vowing never to return.

{Shut-up, it was the best I could do at 2am}

And it's a technique that my daughter is using too, for now to deal with the admittedly spooky Jane and Aro from Twilight by turning them into... Hula Dancers.

January 21, 2013

I spent the last week in a house full of girls while my husband and son enjoyed a surprise birthday ski trip. It all ended well, thankfully, but I wasn't sure they would actually make it onto the plane given the series of "I don't want to go waaaaah sniffle" phone calls from the aiport and then a lost Nintendo DS game cover (and a couple of games) which caused more waaaaahs and sniffles.

You'd think by now we'd learn not to give the anxious kid a series of surprises that while awesome in our minds are like smacking him in the face repeatedly with a board.

I'm going to remind myself of that any time we get the brilliant idea to bombard him with our idea of fabulousness, which as we're getting is not everyone's idea of fabulousness, though to be fair, he had an amazing time and I'm proud that he was able to get over the initial shock of it all to settle down and enjoy some time as an only child.

As much as I thought my week would be easier without Drew home, which isn't just because Drew makes life interesting (read: challenging and exhausting) but because when you go from four kids to three kids, it's like going from an obstacle course with a 40lb backpack in the mud to a 5k.

You're still running, but you're faster! and lighter! and much cleaner and happier at the end.

But oddly enough I was still late getting the kids to school every day. The girls did not go to bed earlier. And I actually felt more tired.

You see, I've apparently got some sort of system down, a way of doing things that just works, and so when one piece is missing, I just don't function as well as when all the pieces are in place.

It's still chaotic and a bit crazy, in fact, I'm quite certain there's nothing pretty about it, but it works.

We work.

{Cue some overplayed but tremendously accurate team without a player analogy here}

And as much as I breathed a sigh of relief to not be answering his 400 questions about ladybugs, or remind him for the 12th time that the watermelon did not somehow magically ripen between the 15 minutes you asked me last, I missed my boy.

Happy 6th Birthday, sweet Drew. You make life interesting. And that's a very good thing.

January 07, 2013

When you walk around with your ankles shackled by anxiety on a regular basis, your mind can get trapped on a merry-go-round of crazy thoughts. But every now and then I can them, like the persistent one in which I convince myself that I'm going to die young, and turn it into a brilliant idea.

Now the skin mole check, or whatever that unsexy exam where they mark all your freckles and moles on a paper and then scrape a few off with a razor is called, wasn't necessarily brilliant, but it was a smart idea. And phew, all clear.

And there is the circus money I've started to stash away, which is really smart, or possibly brilliant if they all decide to major in art history or something.

Yes, so I was inspired by a Matt Damon movie. Shut up.

No, the actual brilliant idea came about when I saw these pretty "Q" hoop earrings on Etsy when Quinlan was a baby. And I thought since she had such a unique letter, that it might be cool to collect jewelry with it and give them all to her when she was older and wanted to change her name because it was so weird.

KIDS.

This then turned into a collection of initial necklaces and other fun trinkets for all the girls which I stuff on a regular basis into our fireproof box.

But then THEN the real brilliance happened thanks to the lovely Courtney who posted a link and photo to a tin can on my Facebook Wall, which generally speaking I HATE when people post things on my wall but it was a can with Quinlan on it.

No, not her face but her name, because apparently a long time ago there was a Quinlan pretzel company in Pennsylvania and so of course I had to buy the really expensive tin can, which led to a search for other such tin cans, which led to an obsession with finding ALL THE QUINLAN TIN CANS THAT EVER EXISTED, as well as old bar trays, and most recently, weird mugs with pretzel handles.

This is all I could fit in the photo.

At the time, Drew was really into fire trucks, which he promptly grew out of the second I put a unbelievably challenging fire engine decal on his wall and purchased a whole gaggle of old fire truck toys, particularly old Fisher Price ones, all of which sit gathering dust on his shelf.

Remember those?

And while Margot was a bit of challenge, I did a little research and found out that her name means "pearl" so, duh, vintage pearl purses!, stashed haphazardly in a box that sits on a shelf in her closet.

Of course, there's the stories I write here, that they can chuckle at and laugh over, which I might force them to do every year on my birthday, even after I'm gone, while pounding on tin cans, playing with fire trucks, and wearing pearl purses and octopus jewelry.

Or they can sell everything I bought and go on a fabulous trip somewhere.

And then at least I can say that all this stupid anxiety was worth it.

If you're curious: I don't spend tons of hours or money doing this, really. I just search every now and then on Etsy, set a budget that I refuse to go over, then tuck everything away in a safe spot so they can't get into them and toss the $25 vintage fire truck off the 2nd floor deck.